This paper examines the use of concepts in software effort estimation by analysing group work as communicative practice. The objective is to improve our understanding of how software professionals invoke different types of knowledge when talking, reasoning and reaching a decision on a software effort estimate.

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is the field concerned with how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) might support learning in groups (co-located and distributed). It is also about understanding the actions and activities mediated by ICT. Educational applications range from generic collaboration environments (e.g. forums) to tools for developing domain-specific knowledge. The research questions addressed in CSCL include how individuals learn with specific tools, how small groups interact and develop shared meanings over time, how institutions change and create new conditions for teaching and learning, and even how the opportunities for learning change as society adopts new models for education. Societies increasingly require new types of knowledge, new means of knowledge advancement and, consequently, new models of education.

Teleconsultations provide new opportunities for learning in medical settings. This study explores the conditions under which learning among physicians takes place. The empirical context is 47 real-time video conferences carried out to examine collaborative work and the medical talk involved. Sixteen of the observations were consultations wherein general practitioners (GPs) and specialists shared knowledge with the purpose of solving a medical problem related to a patient under treatment. In this exploratory study, the learning opportunities are seen as what medical practitioners with different types of expertise achieve through interaction while working with patients over periods of time. The analysis of medical talk in consultations shows that collaborative work among GPs and specialists creates a shared understanding of the patient’s clinical history and treatment trajectory. As knowledge is demanded and attributed and gaps of knowledge become shared, consultations create a work tool that expands the medical work and talk. Collaborative work in and between different levels of the health care service expands knowledge, creates opportunities for learning in everyday settings, and improves the quality of knowledge distribution in the health care system.

This article reports on a study concerning secondary school students’ meaning making of socioscientific issues in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) mediated settings. Our theoretical argument has as its point of departure the analytical distinction between ‘doing science’ and ‘doing school,’ as two different forms of classroom activity (Jiménez-Aleixandre, Bugallo Rodríguez & Duschl, 2000). In the study we conducted an analysis of students working with web-based groupware systems concerned with genetics. The analysis identified how the students oriented their accounts of scientific concepts and how they attempted to understand the socioscientific task in different ways. Their orientations were directed towards finding scientific explanations, towards exploring the ethical and social consequences and towards ‘fact-finding.’ The students’ different orientations seemed to contribute to an ambivalent tension, which, on the one hand, was productive because it urged them into ongoing discussions and explicit meaning making. On the other hand, though, the tension elucidated how complex and challenging collaborative learning situations can be. Our findings suggest that in order to obtain a deeper understanding of students’ meaning making of socioscientific issues in ICT mediated settings, it is important not only to address how students perform the activity of ‘doing science.’ It is equally important to be sensitive with respect to how students orient their talk and activity towards more or less explicit values, demands and expectations embedded in the educational setting. In other words, how students perform the activity of ‘doing school.’

Transformation in teacher education is seen as crucial for creating change within the educational system. In this article, we explore how members in a teacher education program interpret new ideas and tools such as portfolio assessment, case-based methods, and ICT. These ideas and tools are important conditions for the collective change of the institution, where portfolio assessment emerges as a new object between the subject-oriented communities. In activity theoretical terms, we suggest that learning is a matter of acting on and talking about the object within and between communities. These sideways movements lead to transformations on the object. This conception also gives us an alternative perspective on the classical theory/practice problem.

The chapter presents a case study following the activities of super users and local developers during the adoption of a new business application by an accounting firm in Scandinavia (referred to as the Company). The Company launched a program to train super users to help with this process because of the complexity of the new system, a generic, multipurpose application system replacing several older, non-integrated systems. The system, Visma Business (VB), is a comprehensive financial and account- ing application delivered as a set of components that need to be configured for domain-specific tasks, depending on the clients the accountants will interact with. The super users and the local end user de- veloper (also called the application coordinator) were asked to take part in this study. We documented their activities empirically and analytically, using interviews to gather data and drawing on aspects of Activity Theory for the conceptual framework for analysis. Our findings provide insight into end-user development (EUD) activities with VB: what roles were created by the Company, what roles emerged spontaneously during the process, what the various user groups (regular users, super users, and the application coordinator) did, and how EUD was coordinated between super users and the application coordinator. Our findings show that super users fill an important niche as mediators between regular users and local developers and can make a significant contribution to the success of EUD efforts in a nontechnical application domain.

The research literature in CSCL has rarely addressed the question of how institutional contexts contribute to constituting the meanings and functions of CSCL applications. The argument that we develop here concerns how the institutional context impacts the use of CSCL applications and how this impact should be conceptualized. In order to structure to our argument, we introduce a distinction between systemic and dialogic approaches to CSCL research. We develop our argument by working through a selection of relevant studies belonging to the two perspectives, and conclude that not enough attention has been given to the emergent characteristics of activities where CSCL tools have been introduced. This is particularly the case in studies belonging to a systemic approach. Our basic argument is that a dialogic stance can provide important insights into how institutional practices shape the meanings and functions of CSCL tools. A dialogic perspective provides opportunities for making sense of learning and knowledge construction at different levels of activity, while at the same time retaining sensitivity to the mutually constitutive relationship between levels.

This chapter presents a case study in software product development in a company that develops and sells project-planning tools for the oil and gas industry and provides consultancy services, training and support in using these tools. We were invited into the company to give advice on their knowledge management practices for customer relations. The rationale for the invitation and the subsequent intervention is twofold. On one hand, the company is in transition to expand to new markets in order to increase revenue. On the other, they want to maintain good relations with existing customers. We analyse these activities, which we have labeled “generalisation” and “adaptation,” respectively. Our empirical material consists of interview data and a video recorded meeting with key stakeholders. The conceptual framework for analysis combines Activity Theory and Evolving Artifacts. We illustrate our findings by the development of two software products (Planner, Microsoft Project Extension). Generalization occurs at uneven intervals and represents major changes for the company, whereas adaptation occurs more frequently, is incremental in terms of change, and is often initiated by customers.

Instead of developing E-learning from scratch, one can integrate it with existing information systems. We refer to this form of E-learning as Technology-Enhanced Workplace Learning (TEWL). The context for the paper is the analysis and design of TEWL in the European Knowledge Practices Laboratory (KP-Lab) project (www.kp-lab.org). KP-Lab focuses on developing an integrated learning environment aimed at facilitating innovative practices in sharing, creating and working with knowledge in education and workplaces. A major effort is focused on understanding boundary crossing between educational institutions and workplaces. To study these phenomena, we develop a conceptual framework based on a survey of trends in knowledge management and related areas. We distinguish between three perspectives on KM (technical, sociotechnical, and sociocultural). The perspectives, concepts and tools we highlight are used to discuss three cases of knowledge practices (software company, hospital institution, and school).